call of the wild

In Utah, July 24th is a state holiday, Pioneer Day, to commemorate the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake valley back in 1847.  This means it's another excuse for Utahns to shoot off fireworks (wildfire danger be damned, because Utah loves its fireworks), of which I am not a fan.  It also means that it's a day off from work and I am a big fan of that.  So with a long weekend in front of us, we headed down to Moab Thursday afternoon; the unusually cool (mid-90s) temperatures we would have were just a bonus.

H on Sand Hill

We got a flat tire on the way down, with the warning light coming on as we descended into Price; when we stopped at the truck stop in Wellington, we found a screw embedded in one tire.  A quick tire change later (H was very efficient), we were back on our way.  Friday morning took some doing to find an open tire place to fix our tire: there was one guy open, and he was slammed, so we left the tire with him and drove on the donut/spare to the Moab Rim for a hike.

Desert dog (domesticated) 

It had rained the night before and with the lingering clouds, it was very humid (for the desert) as we powered up the Stairmaster trail.  Once on top of the rim, we continued along the 4x4 trail to the Sand Hill intersection, then turned down that to go back out via the wash.  We were the only ones out there: the human footprints weren't from that morning, although the sand was crisscrossed with lots of animal tracks.

Desert dog (wild)

We didn't think much about those tracks until we were nearly at the exit back to the main Moab Rim trail when, high above us on a cliff, we heard hoarse barks and then a long, melancholy howl.  We looked up to see a big coyote staring down at us, clearly not impressed with our invading its territory.  H called Milton over and put him on the leash - Milt wasn't the slightest bit interested in or afraid of the larger canid yelling at us overhead - and we slowly continued up the trail, wanting to watch the coyote but not wanting to piss it off.  The coyote stayed there, staring at us, chuffing and barking and howling, but it never followed us or descended off the cliff to stalk us.  We could still hear it barking even after we were out of sight and then, the last howl echoing off the Kayenta sandstone, it fell silent.  We've seen coyote tracks before in the desert but we've never seen one in person in Moab - it was really cool.

"Keep moving along, humans"

After getting our repaired tire put back on the Subaru, we went stopped by Ken's Lake for a swimming lesson (Milton has again forgotten how to paddle his back legs), then went home, cleaned up and walked over to Woody's for an early drink before it got busy.  Pioneer Day is sometimes cheekily referred to as "Pie and Beer Day" by non-Mormons.  Let's just say that we didn't have any pie.

No pie required

Hike stats: 5.57 miles; moving time 2:03/2.7 m.p.h.; overall 2;18/2.4 m.p.h.; 1,460' elevation